Asklemmy

43945 readers

638 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

112

Americans, how would you feel about making student loans completely illegal? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by nodsocket@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

130 comments fedilink hide all child comments

This would save young Americans from going into crippling debt, but it would also make a university degree completely unaffordable for most. However, in the age of the Internet, that doesn't mean they couldn't get an education.

Consider the long term impact of this. There are a lot of different ways such a situation could go, for better and for worse.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] harmonea@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

You're talking about changes that will take a generation or more to settle. While these things are in flux, professors will lose their jobs, research grants and budgets will be gutted, and educational assets will be liquidized (imagine museums being sold off to private collections - this is incredibly damaging to the collective knowledge base). Meanwhile, the generations that wait for prices to come down will be left having to educate themselves on the internet, which not everyone has the motivational drive to do or the ability to spot which sources are providing reliable, accurate material they can learn from.

I get that something's gotta give, but banning loans altogether ain't it unless your entire goal is to turn Gen A's moniker into Ass-Backwards.

[–] nodsocket@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes, I acknowledge that this would be a shock to society in the short term. But do we really want to maintain the current status quo?

When I wrote Internet, I don't necessarily mean people will have to teach everything to themselves. I mean services like online classes which offer similar curriculums to a university course.

[–] harmonea@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But do we really want to maintain the current status quo?

I think if you read my comment again, you'd find I acknowledge things need to change, I just think your proposed solution is bad.

I can imagine ways to accomplish these goals more gradually, with less complete and utter destruction, but I don't think someone who proposed something so extreme from the word go really wants to discuss the moderate stance, so I'll leave it with you as a thought exercise.

[–] nodsocket@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

I agree with you that we could do this gradually. I'm just creating a what-if scenario in this thread.

[–] sadreality@kbin.social -4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Old people lose good jobs...

I am sure all the young people who never had a good job will suffer from this

[–] harmonea@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You snark, but unironically yes? Obviously?

If you think the professors that will be left will be the highest quality instead of the longest tenured, you're being willfully ignorant. And that loss will ripple down through every generation those passionate and skilled educators would have taught. Plus, "the olds" or whatever have families (which include young people) that would be suffering even more directly to boot.

E: I see we're doing the whole "disregard the overall point and only snark about the lowest hanging fruit you can intentionally take out of context" thing. Into the void with you, redditor.